1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to multi-party financial systems, and, more specifically, the present invention relates to credit card acquisition systems in which a single intermediary facilitates transactions between a plurality of vendors and one or more credit card issuers.
2. Description of the Background
With the advent of new communications schemes and the ever-increasing ability to manage large amounts of information from a centralized location, multi-party financial systems have seen exponential growth recently. Among these financial systems, credit card systems are among the most highly competitive, and among the most varied.
A credit card generally gives a consumer enhanced purchasing power without having to have funds in an account prior to use of the funds (as with, for example, a checking account). The consumer gains the ability to purchase goods before the money to pay for the goods is earned and/or without having to carry legal tender at the point of sale. The credit card issuer preferably receives the benefit of yearly fees and/or the interest payments received on the money loaned to the consumer for the purchase of goods.
Because of the large amount of consumer credit card debt, many companies fiercely compete to sign up new credit card users, and further compete to keep consumers “loyal” to their particular brand/type of credit card. Among other factors, one way in which credit card issuers garner and keep customer loyalty and retention is by providing so called “rewards programs” whereby the consumer receives some benefit returned to them in exchange for use of the credit card. For example, a credit card issuer may provide cash-back savings on a small percentage of purchases. With credit cards that are specifically branded to a single company, for example an airline, the sponsoring company often offers a more focused rewards program, such as frequent flyer miles given to the user for every dollar spent using the airline credit card.
A major problem with matching these credit card opportunities to the potential customers of the card is to determine a unique characteristic of the customer which may define a certain future spending habit. For example, the purchasers of a new car may be expected to purchase maintenance services and or automobile accessories at the dealership in which the car was purchased. Eventually, if the customer has a good experience with the automobile and the dealer, the customer may also be expected to purchase additional or replacement automobiles of the same brand and at the same dealership. This process enhances the potential revenue stream for the credit card issuer and the loyalty for the dealer.
In addition to locating the appropriate market for a particular credit card, the issuers may also be disadvantaged in that it is difficult to administer different credit card programs for different groups of users. The credit card issuer may provide various benefits, rates, or other attributes to users in different customer groups, and each of these groups must be kept administratively separate from each other. When a large variety of vendors all desire to have groups of their customers obtain a branded credit card from a certain credit card issuer, the bookkeeping difficulties are enormous.
As such, a need exists in the art to provide an intermediary between one or more credit card issuers and a plurality of disparate vendors offering a varied assortment of goods and/or services which are related in some way (i.e., brand, manufacturer, industry). The intermediary should be able to uniquely identify all of the groups of vendors from each other, as well as subgroups or individuals within each group, at the time when each transaction is commenced. It would also be desirable if the intermediary could receive and send data in disparate formats based on the needs and desires of the various vendors and credit card issuers. Finally, it is desirable to use the Internet, or other broad bandwidth electronic communications network, to facilitate the various communications across such a system.
These and other objects and advantages of the present invention will be readily recognized by one skilled in the art through the explanation given below, the attached figures and the claims appended hereto.